[atlantaprog] Re: (No Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 18:44:37 +0000

Playing it as a day job killed his love of playing. It wasn't fun, or artistically rewarding. It was drudgery.

It sounds like he just wasn't cut out for the road. "On the road weeks on end, playing pedal steel every night" - that sounds like what I had always imagined success would be like in an original band (well, if you switch "pedal steel" with "bass").

Yeah. I have to ask, Allen, what music would your friend's dad have preferred to play?

Oddly, he loved the music he was playing - but years of having to support a family that he never got to see took it's toll. So did having to deal with touring bullshit on a daily basis.

...if you truly love music, then play the music you love.

On the other hand: if you truly love music, try having an open mind about music you don't love. Try playing something you don't like and see what happens.

Fair enough. But don't forget to reserve your right to keep not liking it if that's what happens. Just take care of the music you love first. In other words: For some, truly loving music means not playing just any old music.

Oddly, the music that gives me the most joy to play - when I sit down at a piano all by myself - is 12-bar blues. But I can't stand listening to most of it! And I wouldn't want to play it in a band. I think it's possible to have the utmost respect for many genres without necessarily liking to listen to them. I guess I'm saying playing and listening are two different things, and *performing* is something else entirely.

(If you're wondering, "Light My Fire" is, for me, the superior tune. That cheesy Farfisa organ tends to make people forget what a talented keyboardist Ray Manzarek is, at least considering that he played the bass line, too. Try playing the intro with the bass and see what I mean.)

Ray Manzarek was/is a an incredible keyboardist. His work with the Doors was a textbook example of the concept Tony Levin calls "the Good note" - i.e. playing just the right notes at just the right times in just the right ways to support the song in the best possible way. His occasional solos were never ostentatious and always reinforced what the whole band was doing about. (fave Manzarek solo - Rider's on the Storm)

With that said, come check out our lame-ass, sell-out cover band online at www.RadioCult.com or feel free to come out to a show to point and laugh at us in person!

I have another musical confession - if I had a surplus of disposable time, I'd round up a few post-boomers like myself and put together a *70s* cover band just for fun. Oddly though, whenever the subject of throwing a few covers into a Z-Axis set comes up, I'm often the first one to shoot it down. I guess it's because, in the context of an original project like Z-Axis, cover toons have to support what we're all about. This hypothetical 70s cover band would have no pretensions whatsoever about being original!


For what it's worth, golucky will be playing the Ten High on (I believe) July 6.

http://www.myspace.com/goluckymusic

Don't see you in too many of those pics, Jeff. You must be the new kid on the block.

So what's a typical golucky setlist?

A


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